Absence of leads frustrates Bali bombing inquiry

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Signs of desperation are emanating from the investigation into
the Bali bombings, with police frustrated by their inability to
identify the three suicide bombers or uncover concrete leads after
four weeks' intensive work.

Privately police remain confident that the senior Jemaah
Islamiah operatives Noordin Top and Azahari Husin were behind the
blasts, partly due to the lack of clues. "They've got smarter," one
investigator said.

Forensic experts in Jakarta and Canberra are yet to determine
the make-up of the bombs that killed 20 people in co-ordinated
attacks on tourist restaurants on October 1. Although some have
speculated about new, more sophisticated explosives, investigators
believe it points to well-constructed bombs.

Forensics requires trace materials, bits of explosive that have
not detonated. Built properly, all the explosives will detonate,
leaving little or no residue to determine their composition.

That two of the bombs were exploded on a beach, with no walls or
ceilings to carry telltale marks, has added to the investigators'
difficulties. In the absence of a surprise breakthrough,
investigators are now predicting a long, slow haul.

Bali's police chief, I Made Mangku Pastika, is bewildered that
no one has identified the bombers despite the distribution of
thousands of photographs of their severed heads, recovered from the
bomb sites. Police are now offering $12,000 rewards to anyone
providing information leading to their identification.

The bombers must have left their home towns and families so long
ago that no one still recognised them, he said. Or perhaps "they
come from families or groups that agree with the terrorism
movement".

In response, police are continuing a massive fishing operation,
hoping for a breakthrough. Several towns across Java, hosting
Islamic schools that have produced terrorists in the past, are
under intensive surveillance.

More than 600 people have been questioned, but no definite
suspects have been identified.

A police spokesman, Brigadier-General Sunarko Danu Ardanto, was
defensive at the weekend when asked if the investigation had hit a
dead end. "Your question is disproportionate," he said. "If you say
we are facing a dead end it hurts the [police] institution."

Asked if the task was harder than what faced the 2002 Bali
bombing team, he said: "I don't want to answer the question."

Some of those involved in the original investigation, also a
collaboration between the Indonesians and the Australian Federal
Police, point out it took three weeks to make headway in that case.
Two key leads emerged: an abandoned hired motorcycle and the
chassis number of the bomb van, which was resurrected in the
laboratory.

The failure of the current investigation to make similar
breakthroughs has led investigators to speculate that a much
smaller group was behind the latest blasts, possibly arriving in
Bali just before the attacks. The bombers may have even prepared in
the Philippines.

The National Security Ministry's head of counter-terrorism,
Ansyaad Mbai, remained certain Noordin and Azahari were behind the
bombings and would eventually be caught, but he conceded the
difficulties. "These terrorists learnt from Bali one," he said.
"The planning [this time] was more sophisticated."